


It Happens Like This

by labeledbones



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 16:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labeledbones/pseuds/labeledbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“How many countries have we fucked in?” and you hate the way that word sounds coming out of you. Fucking. It's not what you do really, but it's what he wants to think you're doing. </i> </p><p>Zach, Chris, press tour, lots of angsty second person present tense nonsense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Happens Like This

It happens like this. 

Either you say it or he says it: “Don't.” It doesn't matter. If you say it, he doesn't listen. He's headstrong and unrelenting when he wants something and sometimes he wants you. Sometimes he wants you and his bones strain against his skin with it and his fingers push into your shoulders and his mouth, _his mouth_.

If he says it, you listen but only long enough to hear him not say it again. 

You're in Berlin, Moscow, Paris, London, Mexico- Mexico? Are you in Mexico? You lose track. You have an itinerary and it's all lined up for you, but you lose your place. And the cities mostly look the same because you only see television studios, radio studios. You see rainy streets from cab windows. The language changes, but the sky's the same. Your heart's the same. You wish it could be different from one country to the next. But you wake up anywhere and it's mostly just flat. Until he stirs in the seat next to you on the plane, his face heavy with sleep. His eyes open slowly and when he looks at you- 

Your heart is almost always somewhere right in between broken and swelling. You can feel it teetering. 

It happens like this. 

He always kisses without preamble. In hotel elevators. In the backs of cabs. In green rooms. On balconies. Once in New York on a crowded subway platform and you bit his bottom lip hard in anger and lust even though no one noticed. You could taste his blood in your mouth all day. 

You always kiss him like it's the last time. Like it's the last time because this time maybe you'll say you want all of him or nothing. Like it's the last time because you're finally strong enough to stop. It's never the last time. 

“I've kissed you in seven countries now,” you say to him in a hotel room possibly in Australia. 

“Eight,” he corrects you, yawning around the word. His body is warm next to yours. He isn't touching you, but he's close enough that when you roll onto your side, you are flush against him and when you bring your mouth down to his throat, he groans and twists his body around like he's in agony. He says your name and then laughs and puts his hands on your neck. “Please, it's early. Let's just-” 

The light is dark gray, dawn coming in behind clouds. You lie back down. “How many countries have we fucked in?” and you hate the way that word sounds coming out of you. Fucking. It's not what you do really, but it's what he wants to think you're doing. 

He stares at the ceiling, thinking it over. Five, you say in your head. England, Russia, Germany, wherever the fuck you are now you think it's definitely Australia, and then yeah once in Los Angeles but he won't count it, won't bring it up. To him it never happened, just a drunken mistake. Anyway, it was years ago now and a lot has happened since then. A lot hasn't happened too. 

“Did we in China?” 

“No. Almost, but not quite.” 

He laughs and god the sound of it. It makes you want to say things out loud. Things like _I love you so much that my life feels like it's being turned inside out._ Or _You're beautiful, come here, stay here._

He looks over at you. “So, four.” 

You look away, sit up, get out of the bed. “Four,” you echo, standing by the window. You aren't in Australia.

It happens like this.

Zoe's birthday. Her 30th. She has a party at her house. You've barely known him a year at this point. But you love him. You love him? You love him. You love his face and his shoulders and how his intelligence translates to a ferocious curiosity and how he laughs in the passenger's seat of your car and how he eats oatmeal at least twice a day and how he only listens to west coast hip hop and fucking Tom Petty and how he says your name when he's on his third glass of wine. 

Anyway you're in her pool and everyone else is somewhere else. You're watching him swim with a surprising amount of grace. His skin, his muscle, how his body cuts through the water. There's tequila warmth spreading out inside of you as you sit on the steps of the pool. You can hear the roar of the party and the wind in the trees and the splash of the water. 

You're stupid for loving him. You're stupid because you actually sometimes think maybe _maybe_. 

He stops swimming and drops underwater. When he resurfaces, he's right in front of you and he's kissing you. His mouth is slick against yours and tastes like chlorine and margarita salt. He kisses deep. He kisses long. His hands on your face. Your hands somewhere underwater touching his rib cage. 

He pulls back and the sound of his mouth detaching from yours makes you kiss him again. And again and again and again. You don't stop until you literally can't breathe. Until you're dizzy from him. Until you're both just panting into each other's mouths. 

And so you get out of there. You try not to look like you're rushing but this window could close at any moment. You live twenty minutes away which translates to about 45 minutes in LA driving time. It's too far, too long. He won't be interested, won't be brave enough anymore by the time you get there. Already in your passenger's seat he is collecting himself, you can tell. Rethinking the whole thing. 

“Do you still want me?” you ask him at a stop light. 

He turns from the window and looks at you, blinks, breathes out. “Yeah.” 

It happens like this. 

Berlin. You know for sure you're in Berlin now. You made a point to look at the itinerary and check. You say, “We're in Berlin,” to him when he leans in to kiss you, late at night, too drunk, he's going to fall asleep soon and you'll still be wide awake.

“Berlin,” he says uselessly against your lips. 

You want all of the words he's got in him to be said against your mouth. If you told him this, he'd say, “Even, like, 'ophthalmology'?” And you'd laugh and say, “Especially 'ophthalmology'.” And he'd kiss you and keep saying it over and over and over until it was the best word you'd ever heard. 

His hotel room. Your hotel room. You aren't sure why you keep booking separate ones. Even if you're fucking pissed at him, you let him sleep next to you. Actually especially then. 

You want to fight with him. You want to get angry. You feel it under your skin. Or maybe you're just tired. But when he tries to kiss you in whichever hotel room you landed in,you turn away from him. 

“Okay,” he says and steps back. 

“Just- Not tonight,” you say, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Can we just sleep? I want to sleep for a million years.” 

He sits down next to you, his weight falling into you. He puts his arm around your shoulder and lets his forehead drop against the side of your face. You can't help it, you laugh, “This is dangerously close to actual intimacy, Chris.” 

He doesn't answer, just pushes his face into your neck. You expect his teeth or his tongue, but you just get his eyelashes and his breath. 

He says it so quietly, you wouldn't have heard him if your entire existence wasn't completely attuned to his every movement. He says, the words not against your mouth, but at least against your skin, “I'm so afraid that I might be in love with you.” 

It happens like this.

You say nothing. You lay down. You sleep but in the middle of the night you wake up and his back is to you. Freckled shoulders you touch with light fingertips. He stirs, but doesn't wake up, settles back into the mattress, breath heavy. 

And you're still awake when dawn comes, when his phone alarm goes off, when he turns over and looks at you blearily. He smiles at you, all sleep and joy, when he sees you watching him. “Babe,” he says, closing his eyes again. The word slips inside of you and makes you feel warm, golden, just for a moment.

“I wish you weren't afraid,” you say abruptly. “I'm not.” 

But your hands are shaking and he's sitting up with his back to you, pushing the heels of his hands hard into his eyes. He breathes in and then looks at you over his shoulder. “I should go back to my room,” he says finally. 

Then he's gone and you're alone watching the sun coming in through the curtains. 

It happens like this. 

You're in New York and he's in Los Angeles. You don't hear from him. You don't call him. You live a life completely without him for months and months and everything is fine. You don't think about him. You don't wonder what he's doing or who he's with or if he's ever going to shave that beard or how his prep for Into the Woods is going or if he's going to come see Glass Menagerie when it opens. You don't wonder if he's thinking about you. Again, you don't think about him. At all. Ever. Not even late at night. Not even when Jonathan finally leaves and Skunk whines at the front door all night. Not even when you find yourself standing in the middle of your apartment, staring at nothing, alone, at 2 PM on a Sunday, silence buzzing loud in your ears. Not even then. 

But then he's there, on your doorstep one morning. You walk out into an already blistering morning and he's just sitting there, all shoulders and tan skin. Sitting on your front steps, watching cars and people go by. When he looks over his shoulder at you, he grins and it's like it's been seconds since you last saw him. But also it's like it's been years and years. You feel joy deep in your gut, spreading, swelling, expanding, taking over. The kind of joy that aches and gives you no relief. 

“You're here,” you say dumbly. “I have a buzzer, you know.” 

“I wanted to surprise you.” He has no idea. 

“I'm surprised. Would've been surprised if you'd buzzed too.” 

He stands up. “Yeah, but this way I got to see your face.”

He stays in your apartment for five days. Kisses you like it's nothing. Makes breakfast. Takes Noah and Skunk for walks. You go out to long meandering dinners together, sitting out on the sidewalk in the fading sunlight, wine in your bloodstream, him laughing as a swarm of motorcycles tears down Sixth Avenue swallowing everything you're saying to him in that moment. And what you're saying to him in that moment is, “Stay with me. Go back to LA, but stay with me.” 

It happens like this. 

When you see him at the hotel in Tokyo, he is grabbing you fiercely and saying, “Had to go halfway around the fucking globe to be in the same room as you again.” And you're laughing but there is dread in your stomach. You were hoping more would have changed by now. You were hoping somehow two months apart would have made you feel differently. 

But his mouth is on yours by the time the elevator doors close and you don't stop him. You never stop him. You're not sure you could stop him. 

“There was a room booked for me, but I just called and canceled it myself,” he says, standing by the window, looking down at the city. You're standing behind him just watching his shoulders. 

“You shouldn't have done that,” you say and you're surprised at the anger in your voice. 

He turns around. “Oh,” he says. “Sorry, I thought-”

You start throwing clothes into the dresser with more force than necessary. Suddenly everything is building inside of you, all the frustration you'd managed to push down before, all the blinding rage. You manage to swallow a bit of it, but your voice feels like ice in your throat. “I'm just tired,” you say.

“Tired,” he repeats carefully, crossing the room to where you are. You don't want him to touch you but also you want him to touch you. He doesn't touch you. He just stands close to you, looking at your face. 

You let out a long breath, but your body still feels full of everything. “Tired of this, you, us, all of it,” you say without looking up at him. 

“Us,” he repeats.

“Stop fucking echoing everything I say.”

He steps back from you and looks genuinely stung. “Sorry, I just- I don't know what I'm supposed to say.” 

You sit down heavily on the side of the bed. “Nothing. Everything. I don't know. Say you want me. Say you want to be with me. Say you're done being a fucking pussy about it. Say you're done lying to yourself and me and everyone. Honestly this whole thing we do is really losing its shine for me.” 

He sits next to you and presses his lips to your shoulder, leaving his mouth there. You close your eyes slowly. When he speaks, his breath feels hot through your sleeve. “You're the only thing,” he says. “That's all I've got.” 

It happens like this. 

“Come to London,” he says over the phone. He sounds tired and sad and it physically hurts you. “Please, it's my birthday.”

“Maybe if you pout just a little harder, I'll consider it,” you say even though you're already booking your flight. 

“Why are you so mean to me?”

“It's all a defense mechanism because otherwise I'd just be throwing a bitch fit about how much I miss you.” You sigh theatrically but it's actually a pretty honest reflection of how you feel. You finally got him but now you just can't seem to get him in the same place as you. 

You're on a plane two days later, a red eye into Heathrow. You try to sleep but you keep thinking about seeing his face. It's only been two weeks but with everything it feels like it's been longer. Before you were able to sustain yourself on anger and frustration during those long stretches without him, you could just tell yourself you were better off away from him, but now it's different. Everything's different.

You were surprised by how simple it turned out to be. Well, no, it was deeply complicated and all those years you'd spent aching didn't just vanish because he finally stepped up. But loving him, being loved by him, it was simple once it happened. 

In the car from the airport back to his flat, on some old cobbled city street, he reaches for your hand. When you look over at him, he gives you that grin of his and mouths the words “I love you”, and you know exactly where you are, finally.


End file.
